Idempotency (36 page)

Yes. Sure. Maybe. I swear. I mostly promise. Probably. At least, I think I do. I’m pretty sure.

She smiled and Simeon let out a deep grunt after reading her translated text. He reluctantly looked over at Mitlee and nodded while blinking his heavy eyelids. Mitlee transferred the coordinates, and the flames in Simeon’s eyes were dashed momentarily, only to roar back to life as he returned his gaze to his prized pupil.

“Sin, be care—”

Stop it! And I still haven’t forgiven you for my hair.

She stuck her tongue out at the camera and exited stage right.

Dylton awoke with a thorn pressing upon his brain. His reddish, cauliflower frontal lobe ached, and it began to dribble blood as the thorn was pressed farther, harder, into his pliable thought organ. The thorn was etching a signature into left side of Dylton’s cerebral cortex. Over and over, the thorn scrawled. Interminably. The signature flowed with a doctor’s precision, which was to say: messily. Each time the
i
was dotted, Dylton would tense in pain. Eventually, the author would pause, playfully, waiting to dot the
i
for a few seconds, as if the author were enjoying the sight of Dylton tensing in painful anticipation. But the author was merciless, and the
i
would be dotted. Dylton began to cry.

His watery eyes opened upon a tree. An old tree he’d seen once somewhere in his, or someone else’s, life. The tree was sad looking, pathetic and decrepit, clearly in need of help up the stairs. But where had Dylton seen this sorry plant before? A large city? New York, perhaps? And whose soul had he directed at the time? Dylton’s conscious wrestled with the shadows of ghosts as it awaited the next dotting.

The tree reached over the ground, spanning a great distance considering its short stature. As with most Camperdown elm trees, this old plant had seen his share of stories. The Camperdown was a tree that sought the comfort of the cold, eschewing the heat of summer. And Dylton could relate. It was cold here, and they both appeared content with this, if nothing else.

Had Dylton known the tree’s provenance, he could have related further. For this particular Camperdown elm was merely a copy of all other Camperdowns. And as the tree began to weep in unison with Dylton, its leaves began to decay, and its branches drooped, finally touching the cold ground beneath it, unable to fight the good fight. Time sped up, and the tree leaned over as if requiring sleep. The trunk molded into the dirt and larvae engulfed the bark. Before long, the tree had been wholly consumed.

Time returned to normal just as an old Scottish man walked directly in front of Dylton. His shoes made a shuffling sound upon the old, recycled dirt. Dylton shivered, though he had no body. The man wore a plaid kilt, long stockings pulled up somewhere out of sight, and small, thin leather shoes that were tied using wiry leather straps wound delicately up and around his ankles and calves. Atop his head, the Scotsman wore a Highlander’s bonnet known as a Tam o’ Shanter. Dylton wasn’t sure how he knew this. The man shuffled while leaning some of his weight upon a shovel. He whistled a traditional Scottish Highland melody, and Dylton whistled the melody from a long-since-forgotten rock and roll song.

The man stumbled slightly, then leaned down to inspect an odd root that had gnarled its way above the hard ground, managing to trick the Scotsman into stumbling. Perplexed, the man began to shovel.

Time sped up again, and Dylton’s perspective began to rotate around this man as if Dylton was on a carousel and this man was in the middle. Time sped at a fast pace, and Dylton watched the man graft a section of the gnarled root onto the trunk of a wych elm tree, about 1.5 meters above the ground. Time sped yet further, and the Scotsman lay down to rest as the larvae ate his brain. As he began to die, the Scotsman reached out toward his creation, the Camperdown elm tree. Dylton squinted away tears.

Men of varying dress came up to the mutant tree and hacked away portions of it, leaving it dismembered and disfigured. These pieces were themselves grafted onto other wych elm trees all the world over. Some were well cared for, others were forgotten. All looked old, forlorn, and weathered. All of them would eventually die, too. The larvae feasted with wide smiles as if all living things had died.

Every Camperdown elm in the world comes from that original graft created in Dundee, Scotland, sometime in the early 1800s. Every Camperdown elm tree is a copy. Each one. All of them the world over, all glorious copies.

When the copies run out
, thought Dylton,
why wouldn’t you just make another?

Neither Dylan nor Dalton would remember the Camperdown elm tree that fell on that cold day, in the subconscious forest briefly shared by both disparate selves.

Titus 1:15

New International Version (NIV)

To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted.

Titus 1:15

King James Bible

Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.

“Where are we at?”

Dr. Kya Okafor stiffened, then brought her left hand to its opposite shoulder and began to rub hard her tense muscles. She felt exhausted, but not nearly as spent as the body lying between Kane, herself, and the life-sized three-dimensional holoVid projection of Reverend Coglin. In the middle of the huddle, the body of Dylan Dansby lay on a flat, padded surface. Dylan appeared as if he were simply sleeping, but his trance was far worse. Above his body, holographic images of a life hovered, sprinting toward death with reckless abandon.

The doctor spoke deliberately, “We just started the first deathTrip. We’re running some tests now to determine effectiveness and what direction to take when the first deathTrip completes—”

“Start the second immediately after the first.” Reverend Coglin stared hard at the young body in front of him.

“Reverend, please—running more iterations does not necessarily equate to more efficiency. If our subject virtTrips on the same setting too much, we will be susceptible to over-fitting. You know this. We’re treading a fine line here.”

“If you want to bake something, you gotta put it in the oven. How soon will he be ready if not now?”

“It’s impossible to—”

“But there’s a high likelihood that we’ll need at least three full deathTrip simulations, right?”

Kya was losing patience. “There’s a reasonable chance three will be required, but our lack of testing is—”

“Good. Then hit the Replay button, Doctor. ASAP.”

The doctor hesitated. She considered arguing further, but she knew it would be fruitless. Defeated, she nodded at Coglin, then toward several aides who were standing behind an observation window ten meters away. Her minions scurried, preparing for another deathTrip.

Coglin cast his gaze back on the doctor. “Do we know how effective our efforts were to confuse him before he went under?”

Kya frowned. “It’s hard to say. We tested several cognitive pathways. He was certainly discombobulated, not knowing what was real and what wasn’t. Idempotency had been disturbed. But, whether this leads to a more malleable canvas for us to paint on, that’s purely conjecture, as I’ve mentioned several times. It’s just a theory. We’ve done zero studies.”

“Yes, yes, Doctor, CYA: Caveat Your Ass. God forbid you take responsibility should you fail. You get high marks on your sense of ownership.” Coglin rolled his eyes. “When he finally awakes, how will we know—how will I know if this has worked? If he is me?”

Kya exhaled, then replied slowly with only the hint of an accent, “No matter what, he’ll be dramatically altered, and idempotency will almost certainly be shattered. However, whether our reprogramming ensures his sense of your self is intact, or autonomous—well, that remains to be seen. We will not know for certain until we run a battery of psych tests, and—”

“Dr. Okafor, you are a brilliant woman, and I’m certain you could beat me in a game of chess. However, I don’t wish to repeat myself when I state—unequivocally—that we will not have time to do any tests. We—no,
I
—will need to make an expeditious decision with as much precision as possible. Now, I repeat: How will I know if transference via these deathTrips has worked?”

Kya shook her head, flipping her thick hair from side to side. Her voice raised a few levels as she answered, “You’re asking the impossible of me! I’m a doctor of science, not witchcraft. This is no guessing game, Reverend Coglin.”

“Doctor, I pay you great sums of money because you are the best. Or maybe second best, considering SolipstiCorp beat our team to this tech. I’m not going to hold this against you”—but from experience, Kya knew otherwise—“I just need to know your most educated answer.”

“Pff.”
She clenched her teeth and continued to shake her head. “I don’t damn well know. Ask him when the first time he masturbated was and see if it matches your own recollection. How’s that sound? Christ! This is damned guesswork. I have real work to do.” She spun on her heel and began to walk out of the room. Had Coglin been as astute as his younger, healthier self, he may have noticed the look of contempt passing between Dr. Okafor and her staff.

As it was, the rage building within Reverend Coglin manifested itself in a fit of coughing, before he shouted with great vigor, “Hey—Doctor! We do not take the Lord’s name in vain on these sacred grounds! This is not your mother’s whorehouse, you little bitch! This is a holy facility. I’d remind you to respect that.”

Dr. Okafor walked out of the room as if she hadn’t heard Coglin’s outburst.

Kane appeared shocked at the explosion from his boss. He had heard rumors of Coglin’s infamous temper, but had never been privy to it personally. Simply seeing the unnatural red of Coglin’s face would have been enough to send him running. Worse was the bitter vitriol that Coglin so easily spewed from his bloodstained lips. His words were laced with a pure hatred that only the corrupt could muster. And yet, Kane couldn’t comprehend this aspect of Coglin’s diatribe. Instead, he convinced himself that he was seeing a morally righteous leader who was tasked with the burden of making hard decisions. Decisions that lesser men wouldn’t have the courage to endure. Reverend Coglin was sinning for all of them. A martyr, he would do the dirty work for the betterment of them all. Kane’s eyes widened with a renewed sense of pride, and belief.

“Fucking cunt—I will make an example of her yet. She needs to learn respect. She will be a doctor of shit when we get—” Coglin took a deep breath. The air within him rasped as it entered his lungs, but he managed to stifle an all-out fit in favor of some mild throat clearing. When it passed, Coglin’s holographic image looked up at Kane who remained in front of him. Quietly, and with no emotion, he said, “Ensure this moment gets into Mr. Dansby’s next deathTrip. I do not wish to lose this memory.”

Then, in one singular, rhythmical off-beat, the rage flushed out of Coglin’s face. His color normalized and his veins retracted like claws from a kitten. A smile wider than the blue sky during the summer equinox erupted on his face as he flung his arms open.

“Kane! Forgive me, for I lost my way momentarily. And at such an exciting time in our forever long lives. This is the moment we’ve been waiting for. The moment we’ve been dreaming about for decades. This is the penultimate moment, just before the start of our victory. When man’s path is at last righted, saved from the unending onslaught of sin that this modern, technological world throws at us every day in the form of unchaste holo-nano-pixels—when this baptism finally happens, well, the two of us will look back on this stressful night in fondness.” He stopped to catch his breath, looking momentarily strong and vigorous, more vibrant than he had in years.

“Ah, there I go, preaching to the choir again. My apologies. Let’s move on. Kane, any updates with the new facilities?”

Though shocked at the tirade, Kane switched to business mode with ease and answered, “Everything is proceeding on schedule, Reverend. We have peaked at 54 percent capacity in the past week. We also—”

“Excellent.” Even the paucity of details in his report was too much for the reverend. “Kane, remember, we are dancing between two dangerous variables here. One, as soon as Dylan awakes with my personality, we do not want our paths to diverge. I must be in the same location as Dylan’s body. I’m leaving for Titus in about an hour to ensure that happens. I’ll be there before tonight’s sunset. And two, the key to our plan is to ensure Dylan goes on living as Dylan, as far as SOP is concerned. This is our endgame. This is steady-state.”

“Reverend,” Kane stepped forward, within a meter of Coglin’s holograph, his chest jutted out confidently, “rest assured, all precautions have been taken. Security has been tightened. We’ve allowed for a few small openings in our lowest-level networking subsystems, as you suggested. We have yet to detect any tampering, but my guess is that SOP is monitoring the situation. As we hoped.”

“Excellent job, Kane, as usual.” Coglin nodded, then switched topics. “Look, I’m not going to skirt this issue; obviously, this is a risky procedure. But with God’s hand guiding our way, I’m confident we will persist. I’ll see you tonight.”

The holograph blipped out of existence and, as Kane walked away from the limp body in question, he thought fondly about the old man the body was meant to save.

After clicking off the holoVid connection, Coglin was once again staring out at the waters surrounding Seattle. In the reflection of his window he could see himself: shallow eyes sat recessed within the sagging skin of a once-buoyant round face, now marred with wrinkles and the stubble of a beard that attempted to hide them.

He said a brief prayer before continuing his work. There was much to get done before leaving for Titus.

“Reverend Searle—Korak I—I have doubts.”

“Doubts are a product of intelligence, Kya.”